...of duty

Take a good look, because it's too late now. The Angels will qualify for Handmaids, later, especially if their new Wives can't produce. But you girls are stuck. What you see is what you get, zits and all. But you aren't expected to love him. You'll find that out soon enough. Just do your duty in silence. When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by spiders. There is always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

[The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood, M.]

...of mystery

The evening was not without surprises either. If in the morning the groves had fallen silent, showing quite clearly how suspiciously unpleasant silence is among the trees, if at noon the sparrows had cleared off somewhere from the State Farm yard, then by the evening the pond at Sheremetyevo had fallen silent. This was truly astonishing, as everyone for 40km around knew supremely well the renowned chattering of the Sheremetyevo frogs. But now it was as if they had died out. Not a single voice carried from the pond, and the sedge stood soundlessly. It must be admitted that Alexander Semyonovich was upset as could be.

[The Fatal Eggs, Bulgakov, M.]

...of concentration

Unfortunately for the Republic, it was not a third-rate mediocrity that was sitting at the microscope. No, it was Professor Persikov that sat there! The whole of his life and his thoughts were concentrated in his right eye. For some five minutes, in stony silence, a superior being observed an inferior one, tormenting and straining its eye over the preparation that stood out of focus. All around was silent.

[The Fatal Eggs, Bulgakov, M.]

...of midday heat

Although it is unlikely that the guest should come now, perhaps A... is still expecting to hear the sound of a car coming down the slope from the highway. But through the dining-room windows, of which at least one is half open, no motor hum or any other noise can be heard at this hour of the day, when all work is interrupted and even the animals fall silent in the heat.

[Jealousy, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of eating alone

A..., who has finally decided to have the lunch served without waiting for the guest any longer, since he hasn't come, is sitting rigid and silent in her own place, in front of the windows. Though the discomfort of this location, with the light behind her, seems flagrant, it has been chosen by A... once and for all. She eats with an extreme economy of gestures, not turning her head right or left, her eyes squinting slightly, as if she were trying to discover a stain on the bare wall in front of her - where however, the immaculate paint offers not the slightest object to her gaze.

[Jealousy, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of no letters

Some of us, meanwhile, insisted on writing, and endlessly dreamed up schemes for corresponding with the outside world, though they always proved illusory. Even if some of the methods that we thought of were successful, we knew nothing about it, for we never received any reply. Week after week we were reduced to starting the same letter over again and copying out the same appeals, so that after a certain time words which had at first been torn bleeding from our hearts became void of sense. We copied them down mechanically, trying by means of these dead words to give some idea of our ordeal. And in the end, the conventional call of a telegram seemed to us preferable to this sterile, obstinate monologue and this arid conversation with a blank wall.

[The Plague, Camut, A.]

...of exile

Thus they endured that profound misery of all prisoners and all exiles, which is to live with a memory that is of no use to them. Even the past, which they thought of endlessly, had only the taste of remorse and longing. They would have liked to be able to add to it everything that they regretted not having done when they could do it, with the person for whom the were waiting - just as they brought the absent one into every situation of their life as prisoners, even the relatively happy ones, making them inevitably dissatisfied with what they now were. Impatient with the present, hostile to the past and deprived of a future, we really did then resemble those whom justice or human hatred has forced to live behind bars. In the last resort, the only way to escape this unbearable holiday was to make the trains run again in our imagination and to fill the hours with the repeated ringing of the doorbell, however silent it obstinately remained.

[The Plague, Camut, A.]